Owing to increased cross-border attacks by the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in recent months, Pakistan has sought the United Nations Security Council’s (UNSC) support to call on the interim Afghan government to cut off its links with the banned outfit.
“I am confident that this council [UNSC] will join Pakistan in demanding that the Afghan government terminates its relationship with the TTP,” Islamabad’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Munir Akram said in a UN Security Council (UNSC) meeting on Wednesday.
The ambassador’s remarks come as the country’s overall fatalities in terrorist attacks and counter-terror operations reached a six-year high with nearly 1,000 deaths, reported in January quoting the Centre for Research and Security Studies’s (CRSS) Annual Security Report.
Pakistan has witnessed a significant surge in attacks on security forces in recent months with the militants using advanced weaponry and equipment.
Islamabad has time again called on the interim Afghanistan government to prevent its land from being used by TTP and other militant organisations for carrying out attacks against Pakistan.
Urging the UN to call on the Afghan side to prevent such cross-border attacks and infiltration by the TTP and other terrorists into Pakistani territory, the ambassador also called for a probe into the financing and acquiring of modern weapons by the militant group.
“The UN should investigate to find out how the TTP has acquired advanced military equipment and weaponry and to identify the sources of the group’s financing [which is] sustaining its 50,000 fighters and their dependents and its terrorist operations.
“Left unchecked, the TTP, supported by Al-Qaeda and some [other state-sponsored] groups, could soon pose a global terrorist threat”, he added.
“Interim Afghan government’s failure to control the TTP and other terrorist groups erodes its claim of full control of its territory that it asserts in order to secure international recognition,” Akram noted.
‘No large-scale forced expulsion of refugees’
Responding to the concerns regarding the alleged forceful expulsion of illegal Afghan refugees residing inside Pakistan, the ambassador stressed that 98% of such aliens returned to their country “voluntarily.
Meanwhile, the remaining 2% who were deported included individuals who were either involved in terrorism, drug smuggling and other crimes or were convicted prisoners who had completed their jail terms.
Terming the UN’s assertion of an “unfavourable protection environment in Pakistan” regarding Afghan refugees as “offensive”, Akram highlighted that Islamabad has sheltered almost five million Afghan refugees for over 40 years at great economic, social and security costs to our country and to our society, with little help from the international community.
The country still hosts more than one million undocumented Afghans who should return forthwith, he added.
“We have made several exceptions for those with Afghan ID cards, POR cards, for those who may be ‘vulnerable’ if they return, and for the over 60,000 Afghans which third countries have offered to receive but have not done so for over two years,” the envoy said adding that the UN should itself arrange immediate repatriation of Afghan refugees if it has concerns over “unfavourable protection environment”.
